The invention relates to eyewear and, more particularly, to eyewear having a mechanism which allows a user to quickly open the eyewear.
Users of eyewear, e.g., eyeglasses, necessarily have to place the eyewear on their face and remove them from their face from time to time. When the eyewear is removed to be stored, temples extending on either side of a front of the eyewear frame are each folded toward the front of the frame to thereby make the eyewear arrangement more compact. Every time a user wishes to wear the eyewear, after the temples have been folded, the user must unfold each arm before the eyewear can be placed on the user""s face.
Prior art glasses, like that shown in U.S. Pat. No. 2,853,924 to Herzfeld, provide a biased hinge coupling the temples and the front of the eyeglass fame. If the glasses are stored in a case, when the user removes the glasses from the case, the temples are acted upon by the hinges and caused to open to a position of use. However, this arrangement is not beneficial if the glasses are not stored in a case as the temples are always biased to the use position. A user of the Herzfeld device could not, for example, fold the temples on the front of the frame, and place the glasses on a desk because the hinges would force the temples open.
Other prior art glasses, like those shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,050,785 to Auge, and U.S. Pat. No. 1,024,275 to Morton, provide a means for retaining temples in the folded position. However, these references are devoid of a function for quickly opening the temples to a use position. Further, there is no suggestion in these references for providing such a functionality.
Thus, there exists a need in the art for eyewear which can be opened quickly to a use position and which can also remain in a closed position without requiring an external force to be applied on the eyewear to stay in the closed position.
In one aspect of the invention, eyewear comprises a frame front and a first and second hinge, the first and second hinges being coupled to the frame front. A first temple is pivotably coupled to the frame front through the first hinge. A second temple is pivotably coupled to the frame front through the second hinge. The first and second temples are movable between a closed position and a use position. The first and second hinges bias the first and second temples toward the use position. At least a first catch is disposed on the eyewear. The catch is operable to retain the temples in the closed position in opposition to the biasing of the first and second hinges.
This aspect, as well as others, will become apparent upon reading the following disclosure and corresponding drawings.